Middle East peace falls prey to politics

Joshua Roberts/BloombergBenjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Tuesday. Netanyahu told U.S. lawmakers he is willing to make "painful compromises" to achieve peace with the Palestinians and return to its "indefensible" 1967 borders.

The late Abba Eban, the eloquent Israeli diplomat, famously said of Arab leaders they “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Today that might apply equally to Israeli leadership.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington last week to advance (it’s assumed) the cause of peace. If so, he made a hash of it, kicking sand (it’s the Middle East remember) in the face of both President Obama and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader.

Not that it bothered a bedazzled Congress; it accorded him a reception (29 standing Os) reserved for presidents or war heroes. If he were as popular all across the country, he’d be a sure bet for “Dancing with the Stars.”

He didn’t do that well in his own country. A poll conducted by Maariv, an Israeli newspaper, found a majority believe Bibi should have backed Obama’s approach.
Indeed, Netanyahu’s speech could prove a pyrrhic victory, according to Rob Malley, Middle East director for the International Crisis Group. “We’re not talking about a peace process anymore,” Malley told reporters. “We’re talking about a PR process.”

Malley’s right. But his criticism applies as well to Abbas and the Palestinians. The rhetoric on both sides is too often designed to ensure that peace, if it arrives at all, doesn’t arrive anytime soon. Both sides are hamstrung by the need to placate their extremists.

Netanyahu leads a fragile coalition that can be toppled by its ultranationalist partner if Bibi concedes too much or too early. And Abbas, in a bid for Palestinian unity, has embraced Hamas, which wants Israel’s destruction. Without concessions by each, it’s an unbridgeable gap.

Netanyahu emphasizes that return to the pre-1967 borders (cited by Obama as a starting point — not a finishing point — for peace talks) is a no-no because it would leave Israel defenseless. He’s right; it couldn’t be defended.

But in a missile and rocket age, where mere distance no longer guarantees safety, Israel would be just as vulnerable if it kept the entire West Bank. It’s why Netanyahu wants Washington to guarantee Iran never gets the bomb.

Then there’s Netayanhu’s grandiloquent claim that all the Palestinians need do to gain statehood is accept Israel as a Jewish state. Well, not quite.

There are those other conditions he mentioned: Large Israeli West Bank settlements remain part of Israel; continued Israeli military presence along the Jordon River in the West Bank; Palestinian surrender of any claim to Jerusalem; a break with Hamas.

Daniel Levy, co-director the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank, labeled Netanyahu’s oratory “a point-scoring propaganda speech that raised the bar for a Palestinian state beyond the reach of an imaginable Palestinian leader.”

Abbas’ Palestinians have their own deal-breaker demands, notably the “right of return” to Israel for Palestinians driven out in the war that created Israel. It’s a demand for the end of the Jewish state, a sovereign suicide, in other words.

Israel contends it’s asked to make more concessions than the Palestinians, principally surrender of lands won in war. And that, too, is true. But Israel’s got more to give and even more to gain with peace — which it needs and soon.

Time is not on Israel’s side. It faces a demographic time bomb — Arab population growth inside Israel as well as outside. Even the so-called Arab spring looks menacing. Already, it’s toppled a friendly Egyptian regime and threatens others. And the United Nations will be asked in September to recognize a Palestinian state, something increasingly possible as much of the world turns against an isolated Israel.

The Israelis look to us to have their back at the U.N. And mostly we should because the threat to Israel is nothing less than existential. But we should not abet Israeli intransigence in the peace process, if only because our own national interests are at stake, too.

One wonders why, with so much to gain for both, peace remains so remote. The answer may lie in the old Arab fable of the scorpion who asked a turtle for a ride across the Nile, then stung him fatally in midstream, drowning both.